In “Pond” we did focus on abstract visuals, good sound design and I made myself ready for procedurally generated content… if there are new flowers spawning, they are generated by an algorithm!

I think we made good progress and one of the better games from the Cologne Game Jam site. At least the feedback was very positive and I am also coming back to this game again and again – this must be a good sign!

January 11, 2015http://www.bonoboblogs.org/imported/weeknotes-december-2014/

Make the Game
The kids-project “Make the Game” came to it’s end. The final event was a huge success. All participants had a really great time and I guess, that everyone learned a lot on different levels. Check out the gallery.

Ghettoscene Demoparty
The last demoparty of the year was this time named “Ghettoscene 2014″. Here are two small works I made in the context of the party. This soundscape was recoded directly at the partyplace and is 100% without any post-production.

This is a picture from the travel. It is a snowy landscape, taken with my Firefox OS mobile from a driving car. This photo is 100% unedited.

To get used with creating pixel art I began to do pixel-jams, often on the evening with some random topics, that come into the mind. Here are some of the results.

December Drehbar

This wasn’t the best session, but got some inserting aspect in it. I like especially the duet-like evolving the things in this recording. As always at the Drehbar-sessions… there was zero preparation of the event, we talk about 100% improvisation only based on skills and mood.

Running PD without GUI (Graphical User Interface).How to run PD from the command line. On the Raspberry Pi it can be really useful, to run a pd-patch in the terminal mode – without any GUI. It is easy like that:

http://www.bonoboblogs.org/imported/weeknotes-november-2014/

Lange Nacht der Museen / Drehkommando
Another Drehkommando with the fun of tweaking audio live. This night we were six people on stage! Before the Drehkommando there were awesome live-acts from Das Blaue Monster, Erich Schall, Cie and Some People Never Go Crazy. I provided live-visuals for this event. Here is a small video. Read more about the night at Der kleine grüne Würfel.

Sonic Pi LiveCoding-Talk at RhineDev-ConfRhineDev was a new one-day conference in Cologne. It was about bringing together game-developers from the NRW-region. There were many small talks about a big variety of topic. I held a hand-on talk about the Sonic Pi livecode-environment. I just 15 minutes I showed the audience, how to prototype sound-fx and mini music-scores with that Sonic Pi thing.

PuteData DrumSequencer Experiment
At the end of the month I had a small idea for a special kind of drum machine, that generate not too predictable drum sequences. A nice Saturday morning experiment. I guess, I will have to take this idea one level ahead and maybe the result will be a small app.

http://www.bonoboblogs.org/imported/weeknotes-october-2014/

Live-Coding, new tools, visuals, music. Another super-active and rewarding month full of tinkering and joy.

Railscamp
There were lots of smaller things going on in October. For example the Railscamp, an event from Rubyists for Rubyists, where I learned about drawing, Arduino and MIDI, skating and other cool stuff, you would not expect from a developer-conference.

Drehbar
The people at Digitac e.V. in Aachen organized another “Drehbar”. This is where handselected people meet to live-improvise music in front of an audience. The session was really good and we recoded it as well. Besides the recording, we had a good debate about playing electronic music live and skills mature as well. Expect more in the future!

Makers-meetup for Kids
At Dingfabrik we had a meetup of makers and pedagogues. We had lots of great talks and project-pitches about, how to get kinds and young grown-ups into the “making of things”, like you do in a FabLab or a Makerspace. It was an awesome day with highly motivated people. The project will continue also in 2015 and we hope to make the first workshops with kids real soon.

Make the game
I became a “technical assistant” at the project “Make the Game“. It’s a media-art project for kids, where they really make a game, involving storytelling, programming and performance.

I got often asked, if you can code music on the fly without stopping the output. The short answer ist: yes. Use use threads to sync single channels and defines to dynamically overwrite single sound-commands.

In fact, you’ll need a little code-overhead, but once you mastered this technique, live improvisation of live-coded music is possible. I made this video-screencast, that shows how to do it! Feel free to share.

October 30, 2014http://www.bonoboblogs.org/imported/heartbreak-hotel/

Let me tell you a story. I live in Germany. Games here are under harsher restrictions. Protection of youth is constitutional. When I received the German Developer Award, a journalist I’ve never met before gave a heartwarming speech on how TRAUMA shows even to the most jaded skeptics that game can be art. On the [...]

October 7, 2014http://www.bonoboblogs.org/imported/weeknotes-sep-2014/

Live-Coding, new tools, visuals, music. Another super-active and rewarding month full of tinkering and joy.

Three beamer setup / Live VJing
The month began with a new venue in Cologne, that is still evaluating. I had the great opportunity to setup a 3-videobeamer-VJ night for the very first “hello-world” party (that was connected to the Pirate Summit).

I invited two other VJs and we played almost the whole night together with the DJs. Although we had lots of really small mishaps, this night turned out to be really awesome. The people – the location… still inspiring me today.

And here a made a small improvisation in trying to live-code in PureData from scratch.

Sonic Pi Tutorial
The one or the other has noticed, that there was big release of the Ruby-based music Live-Coding tool “Sonic Pi“. I can encourage everyone to try this tool, because it is just great! I made a video-tutorial, that shows how to make synced-threads in Sonic Pi. Feel free to share!!

MIDI Shields
The Arduino MIDI-shields have arrived and I soldered, tested and programmed the first one. An awesome tool with great possibilities to connect the world of code with professional music hardware.

Pyxel Edit / Pixel PractisePyxel Edit is the name of the next “favorite tool” I discovered this month. It is a pixel, tile and sprite-editor that is really well designed and available for all operating systems (because it is build about the Adobe Air virtual machine). Both user interface and features are very balanced.
Here is a small late night sketch I made with Pyxel.

Swift Generative TextPattern
In a “hands-on Swift” minute, I applied things I learned from music-algorithms on generating a text pattern. This is the result: a neat text-pattern generated by a Swift script. I like it a lot!

Connect @nodepond
That’s all for the September. If you like that stuff, connect to get more recent updates on everything. Like me on Facebook or follow me on twitter @nodepond.

September 30, 2014http://www.bonoboblogs.org/imported/pyxel-tilemap-to-mogamett-parser-in-ruby/

September 14, 2014http://www.bonoboblogs.org/imported/weeknotes-aug-2014/

Evoke
Demoparty Evoke in Colonge was a blast again! I made a DJ-set in front of really open-minded people. Enjoyable! I was able to play some really brillant and some really weird vinyls as well. Had also my videobeamer at hand made some wildbeamin’ in the hall.

Gamescom
It was Gamescom again in Cologne. This year with another new big number of visitors. My highlights this year were indie-games i.e. indie mega-booth and the huge, renewed retro-game part of the fair. Indie games really get better and better.

C3S
The C3S – the fair alternative to the GEMA – made a barcamp and their annual “Generalvollversammlung”, where we could all vote about ongoing things about the C3S. The people and the atmosphere was open and very constructive. Awesome people who make this thing. Be a part of it and join the C3S. It is really worth to support the goals of the C3S.

Micro Nord
I obtained a new interesting piece of hardware: the Nord Micro Modular. Small, compact, easy to transport, lots of sound-design possibilities and excellent sound. It is from the mid 90iers, but still a very good piece of hardware. It took me some time, to get the vintage programming-software up- and running, but I made it and here is the first patch I made. A chiptunes adventure. I am very curious about new wired sounds coming up – since I am into algorithmic music right now – all possible with the modular design of this piece of hardware!

Drehkommando

We are still debating about progressing the “Drehkommando” – out little concept of pulling together some MIDI-gear and making live-improvisation from scratch. New ideas develop into trying direction of sound-installations and live-coding as well. The next staging will be on the 8th November 2014. Maybe there will be some more (open) studio sessions before as well.

Own projects
Small increments on own projects. Next week notes we will have content to show!

A work-in-progress sketch of SuperSonic

Some pixelart-sketches…

vvvv-Stammtisch
vvvv-UserGroup meeting again at the Dingfabrik. This time I learned deeper insights of shader-coding. Awesome!

Drehbar
The Digitac e.V. – a digital art culture space in Aachen – tried a new format. The so called “Drehbar”. It is a little bit like “Drehkommando” meets “Demoscene” and I am very curious into what sort of event this one will develop. I was invited the live-improvise that night with others – and the night turned out to be awesome! We made in parts the live-score to the movie Metropolis. We jammed five hours of very nice electronic music from scratch. Just like I said: in Aachen you sometimes experience surprises. The next Drehbar is scheduled for the 27. September 2014.

…and much much more
There was still more stuff, but this article is already this long. If you want to get more accurate updates on my activities, connect via Twitter: @nodepond.

Here is a very early demo of my live-coding sequencer “SuperSonic”. It demonstrates to most basic functionality. The Ruby-console (irb) connects to the SuperSonic-pd-patch via a socket. You can then use your keyboard to program sequences – the will be much more high-level commands following!

The sequences are then routed to MIDI-channels. In this case I use Ableton Live to make some noise, but you are not limited to this workflow. You can also route the sequences to other PureData patches or even to hardware via MIDI!

There are still some small issues with handling the velocities and accuracy, but I guess the “minimum viable product” will be released within the next weeks.

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Bonoboblogs is an agglomerated blog of people who are into game design or related art. We tend to be clever and open and have fresh views on computing games. We fill the gap between experimental gameplay, game design and theory. More about.